Abstract

[T]his paper examines the question of major international security policy change within a multinational context. I consider a range of decisions and actions taken within the framework of a Western security regime with regards to the ultimate interventions in both the Bosnian Civil War and the Kosovo crisis. By characterizing the Western powers in terms of an informal multinational security regime, I distinguish the policy making aspects of Western governments form their efforts at policy implementation (through various formal organizations, such as the United Nations, the Contact Group, the European Union, NATO, etc.). This distinction is necessary for two main reasons. First, form a practical and methodological perspective, a level of analysis needs to be identified and selected. Second (and perhaps more importantly), I would posit that in its current status, the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) resembles a regime much more than it does a simple international organization, alliance, supranational entity, etc. As such, a regime-level analysis of security policy change seems most appropriate. This paper will simply attempt to demonstrate the utility of a new framework of analysis (i.e., methodology) that may be easily applied to future studies of the CFSP process.